A few weeks ago I basically wasted a couple days of my life getting sucked into the alternate history wiki. http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php (there are two, the one I'm talking about is at this link)

This shit is insane. Basically, it's a board where a bunch of legit history buffs (and probably actual historians) go on about what-if scenarios. What's really cool is that they'll usually discuss a "Point of Divergence" (POD) and then speculate on what butterfly effects this slightly altered event could have over the course of centuries, though rarely stretching to the present day. Sometimes they do "challenges" asking "How could the Australian aborigines have built a powerful civilization before Europeans got there?" or "Could Ancient Egypt have survived longer than it did?" Then, the really successful "timelines" get written out into full, well, timelines, and even full-blown stories that could probably be novellas or something. They even have awards for all this.

What's really amazing is, from reading all this I actually learned quite a bit about the factors that make civilizations rise and fall, particularly what set the balance of power between the continents of the world. From what I gather, a region's place in the world today is hugely affected by two major factors: 1) whatever natural resources were there 10,000 years ago, and 2) whether or not it got invaded by the Mongols in the 13th century.

Now Blooms The Tudor Rose -- What if Elizabeth I had been born male (and thus named Henry IX)? (http://www.alternatehistory.com/discuss ... p?t=276957)Over a 14-year timeline this dude basically wrote an alternate season of The Tudors. Goes into how all the major personalities of the era react and how that in turn affects geopolitics throughout the 16th century.

Lands of Red and Gold -- What if the Australian Yam had mutated into a suitable founder crop for the Aborigines, and thus the foundation for a whole other cradle of civilization? (http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.p ... d_and_gold)Starts way at the beginning in prehistory and lays out basically an entire history of like 4,000 years during which native Australian civilizations rise and fall, eventually forming a patchwork of kingdoms and empires across the continent and Tasmania.

Timeline of Ancient Egypt semi-plausibly surviving until 2004 AD. -- Basically they determined that a big reason the land of the pharaohs fell under other empires is because it simply ran out of gold. (http://www.alternatehistory.com/discuss ... p?t=26778&) The POD here is that circa 600BC Necho II becomes expansionist into sub-Saharan Africa and discovers a couple mines there. From there this guy writes two and a half thousand years of alternate timeline.

What originally drew me into this were some pages from deviant artists who actually take these alternate histories and make detailed maps of them.

This is the one that initially blew me away -- http://toixstory.deviantart.com/art/The ... -491432540POD: 876 AD. Current year: 1894. Make sure you try to read the map as it's displayed on that page. It's written in "English."Basically, Huang Chao dies in this timeline years before he can commit the Guanzhang Massacre, allowing Islam's influence to spread through China's elite class. Eventually this somehow prevents the Golden Horde from really happening, tossing up the entire history of Europe and the Middle East. The words you read on that map are the result of an England minus the 1066 invasion.

Just go through that whole DA gallery really. It's an Alternate History repository in itself.

I may have to go through there sometime when I'm not at work and have a look-see. History nerds are a special type of nerd -- very thorough on the obsessiveness and annotation axes. I have no doubt that these meticulous alternate histories are the real deal. Now I want to play an RPG set in one.

I may have to go through there sometime when I'm not at work and have a look-see. History nerds are a special type of nerd -- very thorough on the obsessiveness and annotation axes. I have no doubt that these meticulous alternate histories are the real deal. Now I want to play an RPG set in one.

I have been told (by Alex even) that Paradox's games, specifically Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis, are basically Alt History simulators that take historical events and divergences into account. Like, Crusader Kings II has 1066 as its point of divergence, but the Mongols still invade in the 1200's and you have to deal with that, and Constantinople still falls in 1453.

Red, I'm gonna have to stalk you one of these days, you keep recommending things I didn't know I like.

Although this has been a small flavor to add to Civ games with me, the fact that you can come up with anachronistic stuff that is just silly or ironic, like getting nukes with the Japanese "The Manhattan Project has been finished in Hiroshima" never gets old.

POD: 1293, immediately following the failed Mongol invasion of Java. Instead of returning to Kublai Khan with their tails between their legs, the fleet decides to sail to one of the other Southeast Asian islands to start their own Khanate. The winds (1293 being an El Nino year in this timeline) push them elsewhere. Deciding this is the will of the gods, the Mongols allow this, eventually continuing across the entire Pacific...

Edit: I started this a little while ago and it sounds like this dude is writing someone's game of Civ or Crusader Kings.

Another big detail this brings up: Raden Wijaya (http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cg ... 9113610696) -- the Javanese prince who beat the Mongols. The main thing you need to know about this guy is, he's the only person I know to have double-crossed the Mongol Horde... and gotten away with it.

POD: 1917. Both Woodrow Wilson and Vladimir Lennin die through unfortunate circumstances, the former before he can commit the US to World War I, and the latter before he can kickstart Russia's revolution. Over the course of the next decade the US becomes communist while Russia develops into an actual republic. Current year: 1974.

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